Invisible ink penFLICKR, SPIKE55151
Gene expression has become the new invisible ink. Researchers report in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they have developed a color-coded system of encryption that uses fluorescent proteins to deliver information.
“The idea is fairly obvious of trying to take the colors and using them to hide a code. I'm surprised no one has done it before actually,” said Marc Zimmer, a fluorescent protein researcher at Connecticut College, who was not involved in this study.
The researchers engineered seven strains of E. coli to each express a different color fluorescent protein, and assigned unique color combinations to represent various letters and numbers. They then arranged the bacteria in neat rows of colonies on a multiwell agar plate, intended to be ...
